mardi 31 mai 2011

The UK Government says it will help to clean up depleted uranium (DU) ammunition in Iraq.The US has said it has no plans to remove DU debris, despite international recommendations for its retrieval.
There is widespread controversy over the use of DU, which some veterans believe has made them ill.
One UK adviser on DU welcomed the British announcement as evidence of a fresh approach.
A spokeswoman for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) told BBC News Online: "Legally, we have no obligation to clean up the remains of the DU we used. It's the responsibility of the new regime in Baghdad.
"But morally we do recognise an obligation, as we have in the past. We helped in the removal of DU from Kosovo.
"We'll be helping in any way we can, specifically by providing money for the clean-up, and by making available records of where the ammunition was fired. Silver bullet
"There may not always be any records, for instance where there was a skirmish - but insofar as we have them, we'll make them available."

The evidence is piling up that DU is not benign at all

Professor Malcolm Hooper, Gulf Veterans' Association

DU, left over after natural uranium has been enriched, is 1.7 times denser than lead, and very effective for punching through armoured vehicles.
When a weapon with a DU tip or core strikes a solid object, like the side of a tank, it goes straight through before erupting in a burning cloud of vapour. This settles as chemically poisonous and radioactive dust.
Both the US and the UK acknowledge the dust can be dangerous if inhaled, though they say the danger is short-lived, localised, and much more likely to lead to chemical poisoning than to irradiation.
Almost all the UK ammunition containing DU was fired from Challenger 2 tanks, the MoD says.
It is also used in "bunker-busting" bombs, in some naval armaments, and in the ammunition of A-10 anti-tank aircraft.
The MoD could give no figure for the amount of DU used in Iraq: one unconfirmed estimate suggests the total could be about 1,500 tonnes, five times more than was used in the 1991 Gulf war. Long-lived hazard
A Pentagon spokesman said on 14 April he believed the US had no plans for a DU clean-up in Iraq. The British initiative is an unusual departure from a common Anglo-American approach.

Iraqis blame 1991 DU for many ills

The United Nations Environment Programme's Post-Conflict Assessment Unit has published a report on DU contamination found in Bosnia-Herzegovina up to seven years after the conflict there.
It recommends collecting DU fragments, covering contaminated points with asphalt or clean soil, and keeping records of contaminated sites. Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Sunderland, is chief scientific adviser to the UK Gulf Veterans' Association. He told BBC News Online: "I welcome what the MoD has said, because it suggests someone may now be starting to say: 'Hang on, perhaps this stuff isn't as benign as we thought'. "And I think the evidence is piling up that DU is not benign at all. The inhalation of these fine dust particles represents a health hazard that was known to the military as long ago as 1974. "The ministry is right to say it has a moral duty to act. I think it has a legal duty as well, in the light of the child cancers and birth defects we've been seeing in Iraq since DU was used in the 1991 war."

Many UK and US veterans of that war believe exposure to DU has damaged their health, and in some cases killed their comrades.
They also blame it for some of the health problems seen in southern Iraq, though many scientists say there is no known mechanism by which DU could have caused the damage.

LESS than a mile from the Syrian frontier, in the land of Kemal Ataturk, Ahmed Sheikh Said defies the identities that borders inspire.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis

Mr. Said was born in the Syrian town of Azaz and raised across a line on the map in Kilis, Turkey. A grocer, he speaks Turkish like a native to his customers, while holding an ear open to the Arabic telecasts of Al Jazeera playing in his store. His wife and his mother are Turkish, but Arab blood runs through his veins, he says, “till the end of time.”

“The bread of Azaz comes from Kilis, and the bread of Kilis comes from Azaz,” said Mr. Said, whose shop sits just off a road that once carried the business of the far-flung Ottoman Empire and now marks Turkey’s limits. “We’re the same. We’re brothers. What really divides us?”

As the Arab world beyond the border struggles with the inspirations and traumas of its revolution — a new notion of citizenship colliding with the smaller claims of piety, sect and clan — something else is percolating along the old routes of that empire, which spanned three continents and lasted six centuries before Ataturk brought it to an end in 1923 with self-conscious revolutionary zeal.

It is probably too early to define identities emerging in those locales. But something bigger than its parts is at work along imperial connections that were bent but never broken by decades of colonialism and the cold war. The links are the stuff of land, culture, history, architecture, memory and imagination that remains the realm of scholarship and daily lives but often eludes the notice of a journalism marching to the cadence of conflict.

Even amid the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in directions that call into question more parochial notions. The undertow intersects with the Arab revolution’s search for a new sense of self; it also builds on economic forces now reconnecting an older imperium, as well as on Turkey’s new dynamism and on efforts to bring reality to what has long been nostalgia.

Its echoes are heard in the borderlands like Gaziantep, near Mr. Said’s shop, where businessman can haggle in a patois of English, Turkish, Arabic and even Kurdish. It is seen in the blurring of arbitrary lines where the Semitic script of Arabic and Kurdish tangles with the Latin script of Turkish across the borders with Syria and Iraq. It is noticed along the frontiers where Arab and Turkish nationalism, pan-Islamism and a host of secular ideologies never seemed to quite capture the ambitions or demarcate the environments of the diverse peoples who live there.

“The normalization of history,” proclaims the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has tried to reintegrate the region by lifting visa requirements and promoting a Middle Eastern trade zone, as it deploys its businessmen along the old routes and exports Turkey’s pop culture to an eager audience.

“None of the borders of Turkey are natural,” he went on. “Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities. That’s the way it’s been for centuries.”

There is admittedly a hint of romanticism in it all. The Arab world may in fact be bracing for years of sectarian and internecine strife in places like Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. And in seeking to be a more prominent, and steadying, influence, Turkey’s ambitions may well be greater than its means. Still, economic realities are already restoring old trajectories that joined the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, tied Batumi in Georgia to Trabzon in Turkey, and knit Aleppo into an axis of cities — Mosul, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep and Iskenderun — in which Damascus, the leading but distant Arab metropole, was an afterthought.

THE DRAWING OF 20TH-CENTURY BORDERS rendered traumas large and small. Sectarian and ethnic cleansing after World War I rid Turkey and Greece of much of their diversity. The horrors of nationalism and the Holocaust made Salonica, a celebrated melting pot, unrecognizable in its modern incarnation. Even history’s footnotes were rewritten.

One example is Marjayoun, my family’s ancestral hometown in Lebanon, nestled near the Israeli and Syrian borders in the heart of the old Ottoman realm, and little more than an afterthought on maps these days.

No one in Marjayoun would necessarily pine for the days of the Ottoman rulers. Massacres occurred, and Jews and Christians faced discrimination in taxes and commerce. There was no such thing as equality. To this day, the darkest moments of Marjayoun’s history remain those last breaths of the empire — the seferberlik. It was the Ottoman name for the draft, but it came to represent the famine, starvation and death that World War I brought to the town, when the famished searched the manure of animals to find an undigested morsel of grain.

Yet more than a few in Marjayoun today might express a nostalgia for the time and place the Ottoman Empire represented, when Marjayoun’s traders ventured to Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula and down the Nile to Sudan, by way of Palestine. The town was a way station on the route from the breadbasket of the Houran in southern Syria to Acre, the Levant’s greatest port on the coast of Palestine. Beirut was an afterthought. Marjayoun’s traders plied the steppe of the Houran, its gentry owned land in the Hula Valley, and its educated ventured to Haifa and Jerusalem to make their reputations.

World War I and the borders that followed augured the demise of this style of life, and not just in Marjayoun. The ideologies that gained prevalence in the town then were about contesting those frontiers — Arab nationalism, pan-Syrian nationalism and Communism, which itself was imagining a broader community. These movements failed as more borders were drawn in wars with Israel in 1948 and 1967. And with those lines on the map came a smaller sense of self. By the time Lebanon’s 15-year civil war began in 1975, ideologies had given way to identities, and most people in Marjayoun identified themselves simply as Christian, or perhaps Greek Orthodox, too unique to survive as a community.

A town of thousands is today a town of hundreds, strewn with the abandoned villas of another age. Hajar bala bashar, a friend once told me. “Stones without people.”

“A RECREATION OF THE HISTORIC AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT” is how Mr. Davutoglu describes his vision for the region. And indeed, that vision, which is effectively government policy, has touched in a nerve in Turkey, a country with its own unresolved questions of identity.
Just as Arab nationalism still runs run deep, with the fate of Palestine its axis, so does Turkish nationalism, which includes a sense that the country deserves a role in the region, and beyond that at least echoes of its Ottoman age. The more sophisticated Turks dismiss charges of a new rationale for Turkish imperialism and call the goal instead a peaceful partnership that might look like the free-trade zone that presaged the European Union after World War II.

“It’s been almost 100 years that we’ve been separated by superficial borders, superficial cultural and religious borders, and now with the lifting of visas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, we’re lifting national boundaries,” said Yusuf Yerkel, a young academic on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s staff. “Turkey is challenging the traditional understanding of policy in the Middle East in place since the 20th century.”

More than the talk of a salon, the vision comes at an obvious turning point in the Middle East. Though dealt setbacks by the Arab revolution — investments have been lost in Libya and the prospect of chaos stalks Syria — Turkey has stuck to its vision of an integrated region. A railway line linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq reopened last year; a fast train is to operate between Gaziantep and Aleppo. The resources of northern Iraq are strategic for Turkey’s plans to diversify its energy sources and to feed a pipeline from Turkey to central Europe. A common free-trade area has already been agreed upon by Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

Turkish television series are dubbed into Syrian Arabic, and its stars’ posters sell by the tens of thousands in Iraq. In Baghdad, portraits of one famous actor are digitally altered to show him in traditional Kurdish or Arab dress.

Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts’ success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands of justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism. It echoes even in Turkey, where religious and national divides are increasingly blurred. Selcuk Sirin, a professor at New York University who has done extensive polling in Turkey, especially among youth, calls this the emergence of “hybrid identities.”

“Young people don’t buy into this idea of a clash, and they don’t buy into this idea of fixed identity,” he said. “They know how to negotiate these so-called polar opposites, and they’re looking for something new.”

THERE WAS A MOVIE more than a decade ago in Turkey called “Propaganda,” a dark comedy about the border drawn between Syria and Turkey, dividing family from family. It was inspired by the reality of relatives heading to the fence there on Muslim holidays — Bayram in Turkish, Id in Arabic — and throwing gifts to the other side.

These days, with the border effectively open, Syrians fill the hotels on weekends in Gaziantep, which is famous for its pistachios. Some merchants here talk about their trade growing tenfold since visa requirements were lifted. Debates rage over whether the kebab of Gaziantep is better than the kibbe in Aleppo.

Turks may still call a mess “Arab hair.” But they also judge a gift by the standards of “apricots in Damascus.” And the old notions of Ottoman tyranny (from the Arab point of view) and Arab betrayal in World War I (as Turks see it) have given way somewhat to the promise of profit in a market still booming even amid the uprising across the border.

Hakan Cinkilic, foreign trade manager of a plastics company called Sun Pet, is reaping the benefits. Nearly 80 percent of its products go to Iraq, and the company set up a factory in Jordan last year. Its exports have more than doubled since 2008. This year he has already traveled to Libya, the United States, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

As he spoke, his cellphone rang. It was a customer in Kirkuk, Iraq, who spoke to him in Turkish. A few minutes later, a businessman called from the West Bank. The conversation unfolded in English, punctuated by Arabic expressions inflected by the vowels of his native tongue. You wouldn’t call him neo-Ottoman, given the term’s suggestion of a resurgent imperialism. He’s not really Levantine, an identity whose borders hug the Mediterranean coast. He seemed post-Ottoman, reinterpreting the past.
“It’s natural,” he said simply.

jeudi 26 mai 2011

(BAGHDAD) — Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters led a massive rally of followers of a hard-liner anti-American cleric on Thursday, marching in Baghdad in a show of defiance as Iraqi leaders weigh whether to keep U.S. troops in the country beyond the end of the year.

An estimated 70,000 supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr waved Iraqi flags and shouted "No, no, America!" as the tight columns of the unarmed but ominous Mahdi Army marched though one of Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods.

U.S., Israeli and British flags were painted on the pavement to be stomped on by the marching protesters, and Iraqi military helicopters buzzed overhead while soldiers stood guard to keep peace if needed.

The rally was a message to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about the staunch opposition by Iraq's most devout Shi'ites — and the ones who grudgingly helped him clinch a second term in office last year — to a continued U.S. military presence in 2012.

Under a security agreement between Washington and Baghdad, the 46,000 combat troops still in Iraq are required to leave by Dec. 31. But Iraq's widespread instability has led U.S. and Iraqi leaders to reconsider the deadline for the sake of the country's security.

"I am ready to fight the Americans whenever Sayyida (Muqtada) orders me to," Mohammed Moyad, 18, who said he skipped five days of school to train with his colleagues for Thursday's march.

Al-Sadr had not yet appeared nearly two hours after the start of the march, and his top aide, Salah al-Obeidi, said the cleric likely would not. Adoring crowds surged at a convoy of more than 10 white sport utility vehicles that was believed to be carrying al-Sadr, but it drove away without stopping.

Though the rally was billed as a peaceful demonstration, al-Obeidi said threats against the U.S. still stand if the troops stay. "We will be obliged to fight and do our best to liberate our country," he said.

Already, American forces in Baghdad and southern Iraq have seen an increase in rocket and mortar attacks as well as roadside bombs in recent months. U.S. officials have blamed the uptick on Shi'ite militias backed by Iran who are trying to take credit for driving American forces from Iraq.

Al-Obeidi said the point of the rally was to show that Iraqis are disciplined and can protect the country. A statement by parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni, called the march "clear proof to Iraq's unity."

However, al-Nujaifi spokesman Mohammed al-Khalidi sought to distance the speaker from the specter of violence. He said al-Nujaifi is not necessarily against the U.S. presence but declined to elaborate.

U.S. officials counted more than 300 busloads — each carrying up to 70 passengers — who traveled from Iraq's south for the rally, and were joined by some of the roughly 2 million who live in Baghdad's northeast Sadr City neighborhood where it was held.

An estimated 18,000 militiamen wore matching T-shirts bearing the Iraqi flag as spectators burned American and Israeli banners. Small groups of youths along the parade route also struck Americans flags with twirling kickboxing moves to the delight of onlookers.

mardi 17 mai 2011

According to a decision made in the first week of May in the Iraqi Turkmen parliament, the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITC) is to be re-structured. The new head ITC member of parliament and ITC Kirkuk City president is Erşat Salihi.

One week after the new political restructuring of the ITC, on the morning of May 12, Erşat Salihi's Kirkuk home was attacked. Despite the fact that his house was guarded, the attacker succeeded in tossing explosives into his house and planting mines around the outside of the home. And thus, the first large-scale attack on a Turkmen leader in Iraq took place. Luckily, no one was hurt during these events, even though Salihi and his family were at home during the attack. But the fact that the convoy of Kirkuk Police Chief Cemal Tahir was attacked as Tahir and his team returned from inspecting the evidence at Salihi's home shows that whoever carried out these attacks was very organized and resolute in their actions.

These days, low-intensity violence is simply a part of daily life throughout Iraq. And this violence, which kills anywhere between 10-100 people a day, does not actually affect daily life anymore. In fact, the Iraqi people have begun to view this sort of non-mass violence as normal. At the same time, one must not compare the attack against Salihi to other violence occurring in Iraq these days. In response to the significance of this particular attack, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs even issued a special declaration (on May 12) condemning it.

As for Erşat Salihi, he said that while he had been expecting an attack, he was not able to blame any particular faction for it. If this event was carried out with the intent of relaying a political message, who was behind it and what were the contents of the message? The Turkmens, despite being one of the three founding groups of Iraq, were not really present in Iraqi politics until the March 7, 2010 general elections, when they were suddenly for the first time represented by three ministers, as well as the Kirkuk provincial presidency. So have some factions been made uncomfortable by the presence of Turkmens on the Iraqi political stage? Does it bother some that the Turkmens are learning the art of politics? Was the message actually intended for Turkey via the Turkmens? Or is it Turkey's, as well as the Iraqi Turkmen's, changing Kurdish policies that were at play in this attack? We need to look at the recent past to find some answers here.

The ITC was formed in 1995 in Erbil. At the time, the Turkmen slogan was “Erbil is Turkish and will remain Turkish!” But the fact that the PKK was being sheltered in Northern Iraq and slipping over the border into Turkey and that the Iraqi Kurds were allowing the PKK to be active, wound up causing rifts between the Iraqi Kurds and both Turkey and the Iraqi Turkmens. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the ITC headquarters moved to Kirkuk from Erbil. Influential in this move were the formation of the Kurdistan Regional Authority and the ITC's acceptance of the name “Kurdistan,” as well as the fact that Kirkuk was shown as lying within the borders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) maps of regional leadership. When the ITC headquarters moved to Kirkuk, the new slogan for Iraqi Turkmen became “Kirkuk is Turkish, and will remain Turkish!”

Over recent years, as Turkey's Kurdish policies have softened and their relations with Iraqi Kurds have improved, relations between the Iraqi Turkmen and the Iraqi Kurds also began to soften and improve. In fact, it was precisely this improved atmosphere that helped the Iraqi Turkmens successfully win over the Kirkuk provincial presidency. Events such as Turkey's opening a consulate in Erbil, visits to the region by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, Industry Minister Zafer Çağlayan, Interior Affairs Minister Beşir Atalay, and then a visit to Erbil by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on March 29 were all crucial in helping overcome the lack of trust that had existed between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds, as well as between Iraqi Turkmens and Iraqi Kurds.

Other fundamental steps that helped the atmosphere were the KDP inviting the ITC to its congress, the ITC approaching Iraqi Kurds more positively, the KYB being one of the first political parties to congratulate Salihi on his new role and the ITC preparing to re-open its bureau in Erbil, which has been closed since 2003. But in fact, these new balances also cleared the path to new polarizations in the region. Forces in these regions were becoming uncomfortable over the changing balances and over the compromising policies being adopted by both Turkey and the Iraqi Turkmens. To wit, three Turkish workers who were kidnapped on Feb. 15 in Kirkuk were held for 70 days in the largely Arab village of Dogmat near the Kirkuk-Reshad area. For the last seven days of their captivity, they were buried in a ditch and covered with soil, only able to breathe plastic pipes inserted in the ground. It is a clear reality that no proposals for solutions that ignore the Arabs in the region will bring any peace to Kirkuk or other disputed regions. In the same way, Turkmens and Kurds cannot be discounted by any possible solutions either. For this reason, dialogue between the various sides needs to occur with careful observation and attention to the delicate balances in the area. Only this will help bring down the tension.

dimanche 15 mai 2011

Ever since the Ottoman state lostIraq, Iraqi Turkmens have been viewed as an extension of Turkey. For this reason, they have always been subject to great pressure within Iraq.

There have been many attempts to eliminate both their cultural as well as their political identities. Their political leaders and intellectuals have been executed. They have been forced to struggle hard against policies of forced Arabization and Kurdification. These pressures placed on Iraqi Turkmen have paved the way for Turkmens to turn inwards and not be represented adequately in Iraqi politics. In the wake of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the exclusion of Turkmens from Iraqi politics has continued. But as democratic initiatives began to take root in Iraq, the Turkmens, as one of the three founding groups in the nation, finally began to claim their rightful place in Iraqi politics.Within this framework, Turkmens successfully brought forward 10 MPs in the March 7, 2010 general elections in Iraq, and for the first time were represented by three government ministers. Hasan Turan, an Iraqi Turkmen, was elected parliamentary head of Kirkuk province.

An increased representation by Turkmens in Iraqi politics has also been reflected in the inner politics among the Turkmens themselves. The most influential Turkmen organization from the perspective of electoral representation inIraqis the Iraq Turkmen Front (ITC). And the inner ranks of the ITC have undergone a transformation. Following a decision made in the first week of May in the Iraqi Turkmen Parliament, the ITC will be reorganized. ITC President Saddettin Ergeç has turned over his duties to MP and ITC Kirkuk City President Erşat Salihi, while it has also been announced that Ergeç is now the honorary president of the ITC. When one looks at the new names within the ITC, one sees they fully represent Turkmen-inhabited regions ofIraq. It is significant that names like Ali Mehdi and Hasan Turan, who both help head up influential Turkmen parties such as the Turkmen Party and the Turkmen Justice Party, are part of the ITC.

In addition to a change in ITC heads, there is also a new governing board of the ITC in place, which will oversee operations until the new congress. With the new seven-person government board and the new system, the governing board and the central decision board will have regular monthly meetings as the “Central Decision Governing Board.” All important political decisions are to emerge from these meetings. Another important decision with regards to the ITC’s inner workings was made with regards to the Turkmen parliament. Although this parliament previously worked within the ranks of the ITC, it has now been separated out from the ITC, and has been made into an autonomous institution encompassing all of the various Turkmen political organizations. It could be then said that the full and complete formation of the new ITC will take place only after the law, still in rough form, concerning political parties inIraqhas been completed and passed.

Taking a brief look at the recent history of the ITC, we see it was formed in 1995 in Arbil to prevent chaos and disorganization in the Turkmen political movements in the region; in other words, its aim was to provide a roof for varying Turkmen political movements. In 1995, the first ITC president, Turhan Ketene, was replaced by Sinan Çelebi, the current industry and trade minister for the Kurdistan Regional Authority. In 1997 the First Turkmen General Assembly took place, and Vedat Arslan, who was also previously a minister for the Kurdish Regional Authority, was elected as ITC president. At the Second General Assembly in 2000, Sanan Ahmet Ağa was elected as ITC president. After the US invasion of Iraq, the Third General Assembly took place in Kirkuk, between Sept. 12-15, and at this Faruk Abdullah Abdurrahman was elected president.

There was also a decision made to transfer the ITC headquarters toKirkukat that point. Influential in this decision was the formation of the Kurdistan Regional Authority, and the acceptance by the ITC of the name “Kurdistan,” as well as the fact that Kirkuk was shown by both the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) as lying within the borders of their regional leadership. But the movement of the ITC general headquarters from Arbil to Kirkuk caused a vacuum within the Turkmen political movement in Northern Iraq. With support extended from various Kurdish groups there were separations that took place from the ITC.

At the fourth and fifth General Assemblies of the ITC, which took place in 2005 and 2008, Ergeç was once again elected as president of the organization. After the 2008 ITC General Assembly a regional election law forIraqwas passed. With the aim of participating in approaching elections, the ITC declared itself a proper political party, and thus stopped being a “roof-providing organization” for other political parties. And so, political parties that were still in the ranks of the ITC were suddenly excluded. This decision can be seen as the real start of a period of transformation for the ITC, which picked up a government ministry position for the first time ever in the wake of the 2010 elections.

samedi 14 mai 2011

Published on Sunday, May 8, 2011 by the McClatchy Newspapers While Bahrain Demolishes Mosques, U.S. Stays Silent

by Roy Gutman

MANAMA, Bahrain — In the ancient Bahraini village of Aali, where some graves date to 2000 B.C., the Amir Mohammed Braighi mosque had stood for more than 400 years — one of the handsomest Shiite Muslim mosques in this small island nation in the Persian Gulf.

In Nwaidrat, where anti-government protests began Feb. 14, the Mo'men mosque had long been a center for the town's Shiite population — photos show it as a handsome, square building neatly painted in ochre, with white and green trim, and a short portico in dark gray forming the main entrance.

Today, only the portico remains.

"When I was a child, I used to go and pray with my grandfather," said a 52-year-old local resident, who asked to be called only "Abu Hadi. "The area used to be totally green, with tiers of sweet water wells."

"Why did they destroy this mosque?" Abu Hadi wailed. "Muslims have prayed there for decades."

In Shiite villages across this island kingdom of 1.2 million, the Sunni Muslim government has bulldozed dozens of mosques as part of a crackdown on Shiite dissidents, an assault on human rights that is breathtaking in its expansiveness.

Authorities have held secret trials where protesters have been sentenced to death, arrested prominent mainstream opposition politicians, jailed nurses and doctors who treated injured protesters, seized the health care system that had been run primarily by Shiites, fired 1,000 Shiite professionals and canceled their pensions, detained students and teachers who took part in the protests, beat and arrested journalists, and forced the closure of the only opposition newspaper.

Nothing, however, has struck harder at the fabric of this nation, where Shiites outnumber Sunnis nearly 4 to 1, than the destruction of Shiite worship centers.

The Obama administration has said nothing in public about the destruction.

Bahrain — and its patron, Saudi Arabia — are longtime U.S. allies, and Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

Members of the Shiite opposition assembled a list of 27 mosques and other religious structures demolished or damaged in the crackdown. A tour by McClatchy of several townships suggests the number of buildings destroyed is far greater.

The demolitions are carried out daily, Shiite leaders say, with work crews often arriving in the dead of night, accompanied by police and military escorts. In many cases, the workers have hauled away the rubble, leaving no trace, before townspeople awake.

Bahrain's minister of justice and Islamic affairs, Sheikh Khalid bin Ali bin Abdulla al Khalifa, defended the demolitions in an interview, claiming that any mosque demolished had been built illegally, recently, and without permission.

"These are not mosques. These are illegal buildings," he said.

That claim, however, is easily challenged. In Aali, for example, the government rerouted a planned highway some years back so as to preserve the Amir Mohammed Braighi mosque, residents say.

McClatchy visited three other sites where "before" photos of the destroyed mosques showed they were well maintained, decades-old structures.

Some sites had a wistful air. At the Sheikh Aabed Mosque in the village of Sitra, once a ramshackle building that residents said was more than a century old, prayer rugs and other religious paraphernalia covered the ground.

On Wednesday, the State Department told McClatchy that it's "concerned by the destruction of religious sites." The statement noted that the Bahraini government had international obligations to preserve the common cultural heritage.

In private, U.S. officials are harsher. One, who's not in Bahrain, said that by bulldozing Shiite mosques and persecuting the political opposition, the government was treating its people like a "captive population."

Another U.S. official visiting the area described the Sunni leadership as "vindictive" and indicated the Obama administration was deeply worried about Bahrain's rapid downward spiral. Both officials asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Shiites have long complained of bias and discrimination here, despite massively outnumbering the entrenched Khalifa dynasty, whose prime minister, Sheikh Khalifa ibn Salman al Khalifa, 75, has held the office for the past 40 years — a current world record.

In mid-March, the government, after a month of protests, abandoned dialogue with moderate Shiites and Sunnis and invited Saudi Arabia to dispatch some 1,500 troops to help quell the unrest. The government imposed a state of emergency and began a crackdown on dissent. Among the first government acts after Saudi troops arrived was the destruction of the iconic Pearl Square, the traffic circle where demonstrators had camped out for weeks.

The government even recalled the half-dinar coins that featured the roundabout.

Most ominous is that hate speech of the sort that preceded the 1994 Rwandan genocide is now allowed in public. The pro-government English language Gulf Daily News last Sunday gave prominence to a reader's letter that compared Shiites to "termites" that should be exterminated.

"The moral is: to get rid of the white ants so they don't come back . . . " said the letter, signed only, "Sana P S."

Bahrain television has carried the canard that the Shiite sect allows its followers to lie, implying that what they say can't be trusted.

The crackdown also threatens to turn what had been an internal conflict into an international one.

Shiite led-Iran, which lies across the Gulf, is actively vying for influence in this predominantly Shiite state and has condemned the organized destruction of Shiite culture. The upheaval also has stirred passions in Shiite-ruled Iraq.

But Arab language television channels, including Al Jazeera, which is owned by the emir of Qatar, and Al Arabiya, which is Saudi owned, have been mostly silent about the wanton destruction.

Interviewed Monday, Sheikh Khalid, the justice minister, brought Arabic language spreadsheets stating the reasons for destruction as well as a book of records of the demolition program, complete with photographs. But he couldn't locate a reference to or photographs of Nwaidrat's Mo'men mosque in his briefing book, which listed all structures by number, not name.

He declined to provide a copy of the briefing book or the spreadsheet to McClatchy, saying they were "internal correspondence," and asked that no photograph be taken of him holding the briefing book.

Asked whether tearing down a long-standing, functioning place of worship would be viewed as a criminal offense in Bahrain, Sheikh Khalid appeared taken aback.

"If there is a fault or a mistake and (they) can prove it, the same place will be rebuilt in a much, much better shape," he later said.

And if they were operating under the law, why did the state demolition crews destroy the building after dark, when residents couldn't photograph the action?

"It is very difficult to do it in the morning. It is a kind of respect for people's psychology," Sheikh Khalid replied. "We were trying to put it in a way that it will not hurt he people. At least they do not see it while it is being demolished."

Because the material he was provided didn't list mosques by name, the justice minister also couldn't say for sure whether other religious structures visited by McClatchy were old construction, new construction, legal or illegal, or on private or public land.

He said there'd been 41 "procedures" against religious structures in Bahrain's capital, Manama, but in many instances, those taken down were just temporary structures. He could only point to two Sunni religious structures that had been taken down.

Sheikh Khalid himself had earlier stated publicly that Bahrain had approximately 600 religious structures, and only 10 percent had been demolished. But he declined to confirm that figure.

Every foreign resident and most Bahrainis contacted by McClatchy seemed deeply discouraged about the future of communal relations on this once-promising island, but Justice Minister Khalid disagreed.

"I think we've reached the maximum bottom we can reach," he said. "My conviction is that things will not get much worse." One day later, he chaired a press conference where he announced plans for the trial of 47 doctors and other medical personnel.

Asked Monday if the trial might not remind many abroad of the show-trials that dictators such as Joseph Stalin had held, Sheikh Khalid said quietly, "There were also trials of doctors at Nuremberg."

He was referring to the trials of 21 physicians who took part in the Nazi program to euthanize the mentally ill, retarded and physically disabled or in medical experiments on patients without their permission.

mardi 10 mai 2011

A Libyan boat carrying up to 600 people trying to flee the violence-torn country has reportedly sunk off the coast of North Africa. It follows an earlier report of 61 migrants from Libya dying from thirst and hunger on another vessel which had been adrift in the Mediterranean for over two weeks. Witnesses say NATO deliberately ignored the boat's mayday calls. Former Belgian MP Lode Vanoost - who's been outspoken on the treatment of refugees - says it shows wilful negligence.

dimanche 8 mai 2011

Istanbul Canal (Turkish: Kanal İstanbul) is the name of the artificial sea-level waterway, which is proposed to be built by the Republic of Turkey on the European side of Turkey, connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Canal Istanbul would disect the current European side of Istanbul into two and thus create an Island between the continents of Asia and Istanbul (The Island would have a shoreline to the Black Sea, Sea of Marmara, Istanbul Canal and the Bosphorus).[1][2][3] The new waterway would bypass the current Bosphorus. Istanbul Canal aims to minimise shipping traffic in the Istanbul Strait. The project is intended for the 100th anniversary in 2023 of the foundation of the Turkish Republic.

Historical projects

The concept of a canal linking the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara was proposed seven times in the history.[4]

The first proposal was made by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (reigned 1520–1568). His architect Mimar Sinan was said to have devised plans for the project. The project was abandoned for unknown reasons.[4]

On March 6, 1591, during the reign of Sultan Murad III, an imperial ferman (order) was issued and work on the project recommenced, but again for unknown reasons the project was stoped.

In 1654 during the reign of Sultan Mehmed IV, pressure for the reccomencement of the canal was applied but to no avail.

Sultan Mustafa III (reigned 1757–1774) tried twice in 1760 but the project could not go ahead due to economic problems.

During the reign of Sultan Mahmud II, an Imperial Ottoman Committee was established to examine the project once again. A report was prepared in 1813 but no concrete steps were taken.

Finally, on January 17, 1994 shortly before the local elections, the leader of the Democratic Left Party (DSP) Bülent Ecevit proposed a canal connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara.[4][5]

Istanbul Canal

It was not until April 2009, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government began secret studies into the project once again and that concrete steps were taken for the revival of the project. The project was mentioned by Minister of Transport Binali Yıldırım in May 2009 at the parliament.[6] Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the “Istanbul Canal” project on April 27, 2011 during a rally held in connection with the upcoming 2011 general elections, calling it as his “crazy project” (Turkish: çılgın proje).[7]

The main purpose of the project is to reduce the marine traffic through the Bosphorus and minimize the risks and dangers associated particularly with tankers.[7][8] About 56,000 vessels pass yearly through the Istanbul Strait, among them 10,000 tankers carrying 145 million tons of crude oil. International pressure is growing to increase the marine traffic tonnage through the Turkish straits that brings risks for the security of marine navigation during the passage.[6] The canal will further help prevent the pollution caused by cargo vessels passing through or mooring in the Sea of Marmara Sea before the southern entrance of the Bosphorus.[8]

The waterway will have a length of 45–50 km (28–31 mi) with a depth of 25 m (82 ft).[7] Its width will be 150 m (490 ft) on the surface and 120 m (390 ft) at the canal bed. These dimensions will allow the largest vessels to pass.[8]

Studies relating to the project will be accomplished within two years. The canal will be in service latest in 2023, the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Republic. The project will be financed completely by domestic sources.[8]

Cost

The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality officials have stated that Istanbul Canal will cost $10 billion to build and that the financing for the development has already been allocated by the Turkish Treasury.[9][10][11] They further added that they would be relying entirely on national resources. It is envisaged that Turkish Armed Forces personnel would play a key role in the Canal’s development.

Criticism

Some critics have stated that Turkey aims to by-pass the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits and attain greater autonomy with respect to the passage of military ships from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara.[12][13]

mercredi 4 mai 2011

"And you all also may remember that early on, I said if you hide a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, if you provide comfort to a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist. " George W. Bush. (Address to US., troops, Alaska, 16th February 2002.)

Given the ferocity of the attack on Libya, the country Tony Blair credited himself with bringing in from the cold and turning in to a new trading partner, Colonel Qadhafi, has been remarkably conciliatory. On 5th., April he wrote to President Obama, more in sorrow than in anger.(i)

The irony of a half African, Nobel Peace Prize winner, initiating bombing in Africa, instead of using his roots to nurture shoots of understanding and co-operation, is a fairly mind stretching irony. But why spoil an unbroken track record and become the only US., President in modern history not to attack a few countries who pose the United States no threat whatsoever.

On April 30th., Libya's leader proposed a negotiated cease fire with the rebels, as long as NATO; "stop its 'planes." NATO and the insurgents, rejected the offer saying it: "lacked credibility." Don't bother to: "Give peace a chance."

America, Woodrow Wilson's: " only idealistic nation in the world.", responded by participating in a missile attack which killed the Colonels second youngest son, Saif Al Arab, and three grandchildren under twelve.

Nato launched the air strike hours after the Libyan leader renewed calls for a ceasefire and negotiations, in an 80-minute televised address. "The door to peace is open," he declared, adding that while the Libyan government would welcome a ceasefire "it cannot be achieved unilaterally." "Come, France, Italy, Britain, America, come to negotiate with us  why are you attacking us?"

But it is April, the seemingly open season on the Qadhafi family, month. On April 15th., 1986 his adopted toddler daughter Hanna was killed in a US., bombing; his son Khamis reportedly died of wounds from another bombing, just four days before March this year, became April.

On 11th., April, Delegates from the African Union, also failed to broker a truce, rejected by the former Justice Minister, turned "rebel leader", Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who had gone on behalf of the government to Benghazi to broker a peace deal  and switched sides. Quaddaffi himself had accepted the plan. In recently released Wikileak-ed US., diplomatic cables, Jalil is described as "open and cooperative."(ii) Wonder what deal might have been struck.

NATO's Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard said he is aware of unconfirmed reports that some Qadhafi family members may have been killed: "All NATO's targets are military in nature We do not target individuals", he said. In broken record mode, he "regrets": "all loss of life, especially the innocent civilians being harmed as a result of the ongoing conflict." Interestingly all three attacks appear to have been on the same residential area, where the media yesterday found a decimated one story residential house, the television still on, food in the kitchen, fruit on the table and a football game machine in the garden.

NATO have, in time honored fashion, intimated that the home was a military compound. They said the same of the Ameriyah Shelter in Baghdad in 1991, where the still unknown number incinerated inside, upwards of 400, were woman and children. It had, of course, never been a military compound. They intimated the same of the media centre in Belgrade in 1999  and, with a different slant, of Baghdads Palestine Hotel in 2003, where US., troops killed two journalists and wounded three. On that day (April 8th.,) two more buildings housing journalists were attacked, killing a third correspondent.

In 2008, Sgt. Adrienne Kinne, a former Arabic linguist in U.S., Army Intelligence, revealed that she had seen secret documents listing the Palestine Hotel as a possible military target, prior to the 2003 shelling incident. Reports from Kinne suggest that the attack on the hotel was a deliberate attempt to control news coverage of the U.S., invasion of Iraq, as the Palestine Hotel was a popular place for international journalists. The list of such attacks, globally, over decades, with accompanying collateral lies, is a woeful reflection on military integrity. (News, websites, Wikipedia.)

"NATOs leaders have blood on their hands. NATOs airstrike seems to have been intended to carry out an illegal policy of assassination. This is a deep stain which can never fully wash. This grave matter cannot be addressed with empty words. Words will not bring back dead children. Actions must be taken to stop more innocents from getting slaughtered. Todays attack underscores that the Obama Doctrine of so-called humanitarian intervention appears to be a cover for regime change through assassination and murder." (iv)

But US., driven attacks have "form" in serial assassinations. In July 2003, Saddam Husseins sons, Qusay and Uday and his fifteen year old grandson, were shredded to pieces by US., troops machine gun fire, in a house in the ancient northern Iraqi city of Mosul. No arrests, no trial, simply assassinated, by illegal invaders. Arbitrary executions, unquestioned and unaccountable.

"Historically, America has not sought to impose its will on other countries. The service of our armed forces throughout the world has been uniquely important to the happiness of people everywhere " stated President Obama in his Nobel Prize Award address. Tell that to the bereaved, bereft, broken, bleeding, bombed, orphaned, displaced. Breathtaking.

In Benghazi and elsewhere in Eastern Libya, the US., and allies are openly advising, backing, funding and arming rebels and insurgents, who have risen up against their own, sovereign government. "Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a (sic) horrific scale", expanded the President at the Nobel ceremony. Right on, Sir.

Incredibly the US., has already done an oil deal with the rebels. Another day, another ram raid. Also another mirror image of Iraq, who switched out of oil trading in US., dollars in November 2000.

Further, regarding Libya:

"The IMF estimates that the bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. It is significant that in the months running up to the UN., resolution that allowed the US., and its allies to send troops into Libya, Muammar al-Qadhafi was openly advocating the creation of a new currency that would rival the dollar and the euro. In fact, he called upon African and Muslim nations to join an alliance that would make this new currency, the gold dinar, their primary form of money and foreign exchange. They would sell oil and other resources to the US., and the rest of the world only for gold dinars.

The US., the other G-8 countries, the World Bank and multinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten their dominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving away from the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy. " (v)

Amid the politics and the horror of knowing that countries dressed as bastions of legality and democracy now have a policy of assassination, Saturday 30th., brought another tragedy. Also bombed by the "humanitarian interveners", was a parent-funded school for children with Downs Syndrome. Ismail Seddigh founded the school seventeen years ago, after his daughter was born with Downs. Through therapy, crafts, music and inventive teaching methods, they aim to have the children able to cope with a main stream school by the age of six. "I feel really sad. I kept thinking, what are we going to do with these children?" Asks Mr. Seddigh. The strike happened before the children arrived, mercifully. The orphanage on the floors above was also bombed.

"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocence, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril", said George W. Bush, as he took that path to Afghanistan.

Shortly after 9/11, General Wesley Clark was, as has been recently re-remembered, told by a Pentagon colleague that the decision had been made to "take out" seven countries in five years. The countries were: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. A little behind schedule, but short of a miracle, the path of greed and inhumanity is hewn.(vi)

Meanwhile, Britains little geographically, diplomatically and follicly challenged Foreign Secretary, William Hague has apparently lost the plot. Foreign missions in Libyas capital have been targeted by crowds angry at a Nato air strike killing Colonel Quaddaffis son and grandchildren.. A UK., embassy building had been completely burnt out. Italian, French, US., embassies and the United Nations building  symbol of Security Council Resolution 1973 authorising the plight they find themselves in  were also attacked.

Mr Hague rails that the Quaddaffi regime has: "failed in its duty" to protect it and that Omar Jelban, Libyas Representative in the UK., had been given 24 hours to leave the country. Hague said: "The Vienna Convention requires the Quaddaffi regime to protect diplomatic missions in Tripoli. By failing to do so, that regime has once again breached its international responsibilities and obligations. I take the failure to protect such premises very seriously indeed." Truly jaw dropping.

Between 31 st., March and 24th., April, alone, there were 3,438 sorties over Libya and 1,432 strikes against little over six million people (vii) on a country that poses no threat to any NATO country, and has threatened no other. Fig leaf UNSCR 1973, does not make the decimation or assassinations legal. The Colonel has lost five of his family. Yet he and his government is demanded to prioritise protection of the British Embassy  while Britain is contributing substantially to the bombing  perhaps Libyans should also clutch a copy of the Vienna Convention for reading whilst on UK Embassy guard duty.

Since law experts across the globe are queuing up to see George Bush, Tony Blair, and their former Administrations on war crimes trials, and now Barack Obama, David Cameron, Liam Fox, William Hague and their colleagues would seem to be on equally dodgy ground, now in three countries, perhaps a little reading of international law closer to home might be in order.

"We stand at the threshold. It is time for you and me to move out of the dark void of brutal exploitation and greed into the light of compassion and cooperation", wrote John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" recently.

Nearly two and a half thousand years ago, Thucydides (460 BC  395 BC) wrote: "When will there be justice in Athens? There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are." When will power learn?

Yesterday, 1st., May, the day of the Libyan assassinations, is the eighth anniversary of George W. Bush landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in his little flying suit and announcing: "Mission accomplished." Well, thats all gone well, then.

Notes

i. War and Media Disinformation: The "Rambling Three Page Letter" by Felicity Arbuthnot